


Four in the Bed

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Foursome, Multi, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper comes home one night to two extra feet than she's used to, sticking out of the end of the bed.</p>
<p>Random piece of Tony-Pepper-Rhodey-Bruce fluff. Mostly gen, snuggling, really. *shrugs sheepishly*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four in the Bed

There were five feet at the bottom of the bed.

Pepper paused in the doorway, her heels in one hand, the other hovering over the light switch (she preferred not to bother JARVIS past a certain hour - JARVIS got enough of that from Tony). She paused in the doorway to the room, and just looked at them for a second.

Five feet. The two on the right, sticking out a little farther than the others, were Rhodey's. Which made the single foot resting alongside them Tony's. The other one would be wedged under someone's knees further up the bed, his knee probably lodged in someone's spine. Most likely Rhodey's. Tony's knee always gravitated to the small of Rhodey's back, for some reason.

Which left, a little separate on the far side ...

"If I say it's not what it looks like, will you believe me?" a small, tired voice asked, from the left side of the bed, and Pepper gaped a little bit.

"Bruce?" she asked, in a stunned whisper. Tony probably wouldn't wake, not with Rhodey alongside him, but for the same reason Tony only really slept deeply when one or other of them was in the bed with him, Rhodey only ever slept lightly when he was over. Standing guard, Tony'd joked, once. With exhausted bruises under his eyes, curled sleepily under Rhodey's arm as they looked up at her. Standing guard, he'd joked.

Rhodey's eyes, when she'd met them over Tony's head, hadn't been joking at all. And neither, she supposed, had hers.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, equally softly, lifting his head in the dimness, his shaggy hair silhouetted by the window. Bruce liked being close to the exits. She remembered that. "I didn't plan ... I wasn't supposed to stay. I ... Ah." He paused, and she thought he might be smiling ruefully in the darkness. "How much of an explanation are you likely to believe?"

Pepper blinked, shaking her head and remembering her heels in the same moment. She looked down at them for a second, a dark blob attached to her hand in the darkness, and then just ... shrugged, faintly, and padded softly around to Bruce's side of the bed. Sitting down beside his knees, watching the shape of him fall still. And watching, beyond the lump that was Tony beside him, Rhodey very carefully not wake up.

She smiled a little ruefully herself, and put her shoes down on the floor to start work on her stockings.

"So, how did Tony wheedle you into it?" she asked, softly. Biting her lip around her smile, working the material over her right heel. "You've not been around long, maybe, but you're generally resistant to his more ... outlandish ideas?"

Bruce stared at her. She could see the soft, muted gleam of his eyes by the light from the window, fixed warily on the side of her face. She didn't twitch, or hesitate in her undressing. Slipping the underdrawer out from the bed, fumbling softly around in it for her sleepshirt. A soft, tired thing. One of the most surprising things about sleeping with Tony Stark, she'd found, was just how much he valued comfort over appearances, when the doors were closed behind them.

"It was mostly Rhodey, actually," Bruce said, a little distantly. Faintly wondering. "Well, no. Mostly Tony. But Rhodey ..."

There was something in the pause, something in his tone as his voice dropped off, and she looked up from slipping her bra out from under her sleepshirt, pausing to shoot a considering (and mostly useless, considering the lighting) glance towards him. Ignoring, for the moment, the dark lump of stillness that was Rhodey beyond them.

"Sometimes it's good to have someone at your back," Bruce whispered quietly. "I don't know ... if he meant him or me. But James said yes, and he seemed a bit more ..."

She smiled. Well, grinned, a little. Watching Rhodey's hand curl a little tighter around Tony's exposed shoulder, making Tony do that soft, startled hiccup thing he did when you poked him in his sleep.

"Responsible?" she asked, lightly. To be fair, it wasn't an impression you could fault. Stand Rhodey and Tony beside each other, and ask someone to pick the responsible one ...

"Tony wouldn't hurt you," Bruce said, soft and firm. "I knew that. Know that. But ... I think he doesn't always _realise_? Rhodey, though ..."

Pepper smiled. Dropping her bra on the floor somewhere, swinging her legs up onto the bed so she could lean over, and rest her hand softly on Bruce's cheek. He went still, under it. Staring up at her, wary and cautious, fearing he had overstepped. But he didn't flinch, and that was more than could have been said when he'd first arrived to stay with them.

"They wouldn't hurt me," she agreed, quietly. "Neither of them." She bit her lip, shaking her head faintly. "You can stay as long as you want, Bruce," she said, as gently as she knew how. "And you can leave when you want to, too. Just ... just remember that, okay?"

He didn't answer, for a long, long second. Stayed silent, with her weight resting softly on his hip, and Rhodey's eyes soft and invisible on his back. And then ...

"Until morning?" he asked, soft and tentatively, but with that streak of humour underneath it, that slightly bitter, knowing self-amusement that Pepper thought might have been what made Tony want to keep him, way back when. "Until morning?" he asked, and she grinned softly down at him in the darkness.

"You want the edge, or are you going to budge up into Tony?" she asked. Well. It was the most important question, wasn't it?

He smiled at her for that. A quick flash of white teeth in the dimness, as he squirmed closer to the edge, and lifted the blanket to invite her over him into the warm darkness beside Tony.

"Giant green rage monsters go next to the window," he said, and she'd have growled at him, she would, but the humour in it almost eclipsed the bitterness, so maybe she could let it go. Maybe she could. Some things ... you didn't get to take away from someone. Some pains would always leave a little piece of bitterness, no matter how safe and warm the darkness.

Instead, she slipped over him, wriggled herself into the space between them until her bum pressed gently into the small of Tony's back, and her arms slipping softly over Bruce's waist. Behind her, uncurling from Tony's shoulder, she felt Rhodey's knuckles softly brush her hair.

"Giant green rage monster guards our backs," she whispered back, and hugged him softly to her as he chuckled startled in the darkness.

No, she thought. Curled between them, in the warmth and the darkness. Tony wouldn't hurt her. None of them, not one of them, would willingly hurt her.

And with the three of them curled around her ... she didn't think anyone else could either.


End file.
